Diversity of thought requires fostering a range of viewpoints and highlighting differences.
Week 15: Diversity of Thought
Traditional leadership:
In the past, leaders conventionally placed a high value on subject-matter expertise.
A fresh approach:
To innovate in the new era, while subject-matter expertise is still important, you need to foster diverse perspectives and viewpoints. To do this, you must create teams and workgroups that highlight and represent many differences of disciplines, backgrounds, personalities, experiences, and perspectives.
Bring it to life:
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- Amplify vs minimize differences
- Invite your group members to share minority and contrary viewpoints.
- Allow for a variety of modes of participation to accommodate different learning and engagement styles in your meetings.
- Ask questions to elicit different viewpoints.
- Look for opinions outside of your usual circle.
- Create a psychologically safe environment and actively encourage less vocal colleagues to share their ideas.
Come back next week for Leading Innovation: Constructive Conflict & Debate.